If trolls don’t face consequences for asserting invalid software patents, then they will continue to shake down productive companies. That is why EFF has filed an amicus brief [PDF] urging the court to uphold fee awards against patent trolls (and their lawyers) when they assert software patents that are clearly invalid under the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v.

Sean Richey and J. Benjamin Taylor have a new book on how Google searches affect democratic knowledge, “Google and Democracy: Politics and the Power of the Internet.” I asked them questions about what they found. Richey is an associate professor of political science at Georgia State University, while Taylor is assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

The Trump Administration this week formally accused the North Korean government of responsibility for the WannaCry ransomware attacks that hobbled hundreds of thousands of computers “in more than 150 countries” in May 2017.

What exactly was the extent of Russian meddling in the 2016 election campaign? How widespread was its infiltration of social media? And how much influence did its propaganda have on public opinion and voter behavior?

Scholars are only now starting to tackle those questions. But to answer them, academics need data — and getting that data has been a problem.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that six women, all former law clerks and legal externs, have accused federal appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski of “inappropriate sexual conduct or comments,” with allegations that included showing them pornography and suggesting that they exercise naked.

The FCC is poised to rescind the Open Internet Order—the set of strong, enforceable net neutrality rules that prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from interfering with web traffic that travels across their networks. One unintentional victim of that action is likely to be small television stations, newspaper publishers, and websites devoted to local news. Local news outlets play a vital civic role, but they face a crisis of declining revenue and audience, largely driven by internet competition.